Why We'll Never Go 'Green' As Our Main Source of Energy

When I state 'we' in the subject, I mean every person in every country on the entire planet. Most of my reasoning is derived from common sense and a sense of reality without an agenda. Think about it. Every time we turn on the TV news, go to the gas station, read an article in the paper, or read an opinion blog the only thing we hear about and concentrate on is the cost of gasoline, pollution of carbon fuels that are ruining our air quality and causing climate change and health problems, our near total dependence on foreign sources for this fuel, and a justification as to further 'proof' that we need to go totally green.

But, you never hear what the ramifications to the goal of going totally 'green' really are. Let's take a look.

First off, which carbon-based fuels are used around the world every day? The major carbon-based fuels are generally known as petroleum, natural gas, coal, and wood, as well as a few lesser known or lesser used fuels. For this treatise we will stick with petroleum only since it is has become the topic of most interest and the most discussed nowadays. And since gasoline for automobiles seems to be the only discussion we hear about, let's stick to only one facet of petroleum, your car or your truck. What allows your car or truck to get you from point A to point B? Only gasoline or diesel fuel in the tank? No. When you pull out of the driveway you are only moving because of the workings of every component that makes up that item we call an automobile.

A barrel of oil (40 gallons) produces an average of 19 gallons of gasoline. The remainder goes into the production of several other products ... diesel fuel, jet fuel, kerosene, lubricating oils (motor oil, machine oils, and grease), heating oil, and chemicals for plastics, health care products, and rubber polymers. Now, back to our car or truck.

Instead of naming virtually every component in your car or truck, just consider that they all are produced from the use of lubricants, machine oils, grease, and polymer materials. For proof, just go look at your car or truck and try to figure out which component wasn't produced with an oil product. Your doors, roof, hood, trunk, and front and rear fenders all required machines to produce them. Your front and back bumpers may be plastic. They required oil polymers for producing the plastics and oil by-product to mold the plastics ... ingredients and lubricants. Your tires required polymer ingredients to blend with the rubber and lubricants and tremendous heat for the molding machines . In order for your car to move you must have your wheel bearings packed with grease. Just name any other car or truck component and you'll come up with the same scenario ... petroleum.

With the above treatise I've tried to relate as best as possible the ramifications of going green and what we would no longer have. I hope everyone now has a little better picture in what I admit is a very simplified explanation. Before I leave, we must now talk about substitutes for those items mentioned in paragraph four.

Our government's idea of green is to produce ethanol from corn, sugar beets, and now algae(?), make solar panels, build windmills, build batteries to drive cars, and look into nuclear power. Each and every one of those requires a combination of petroleum, natural gas, and coal to build and maintain throughout their life cycle. Without those fossil fuels, once you build the last one you would never have the ability to build a replacement if the fossil fuels were eliminated. If you are an environmentalist whacko you might say, "but, we never intended to eliminate them totally ... only the gasoline for cars. My question would then be what do you want us to do with the 19 gallons of refined oil from every barrel of refined petroleum that is only suitable for gasoline production? Do we just dump it onto the ground. No! That affects our drinking water. How about just letting it evaporate? No. There goes our air quality. Let's burn them then. No. That affects our air quality and atmosphere. Well, then just dump them far out in the ocean. No. That will kill the fish and ocean plant life. See how ridiculous this whole idea is? Besides, if there were any value in any of these ideas, we'd have thousands of companies all over the country starting up and operating on private venture capital funds ... perhaps trillions of dollars worth! But, venture capitalists are wealthy because they take calculated risks, and they see 'green' energy as almost a 100% risk. They are gamblers to some extent but they are not stupid! Only the far left liberal tree hugging environmentalists can claim that title. And, unfortunately for us, our current administration belongs to the latter group.

Until we get truly, vocally outraged and speak our minds and vote these people out, we will never return to a free market, capitalistic society. Henry Cuellar would be a good start. And, our current president would be the ultimate protest. And, if you live in San Antonio, Mayor Julian Castro is the Co-chairman of Obama's reelection committee. Remember, the guy that's going to give you the streetcars you don't want? He's spending your money without your permission and not even giving you a chance to vote on it!

I'm sorry. But in the end, all this foolishness comes down to politics. We need to heed Jefferson's words when he said, "In confidence in question of power let no more confidence be given to man but bind them by the chains of the constitution". YOU ARE the government ... it's your duty to take it back!

Your Opinions and Comments

If supply and demand determines price, and the demand were reduced as drastically as the wackjobs wanted by eliminating the use of oil for all transportation, the US oil industry would be devastated and would cease to exist or... More ›

If supply and demand determines price, and the demand were reduced as drastically as the wackjobs wanted by eliminating the use of oil for all transportation, the US oil industry would be devastated and would cease to exist or would need to be subsidized in order to continue to produce the small amount needed for other than transportation.
Of course, the supply would also drop because of the cost to explore, drill and produce it. The only demand would be from China and other developing countries that had not lost their minds and gone green. Those countries would then have a tremendous advantage because of the low cost of oil and the much more efficient power derived from it.
I wonder what the Chinese word for green is? It's probably just called stupid.